Cirrus@Austlit

Author's note: The idea which I have endeavoured to embody in the following verses was suggested to me by a lady, who, on my happening to remark, that no satisfactory theory of Comets had yet been advanced, observed, that 'nothing appeared to her so much to resemble a comet as a broken heart; and, in ignorance of the truth, might it not be consolatory to think, that the hearts, which the world has too roughly handled, are, on their release, translated to the orbit of a Comet, the eccentricity of whose motion would remind them of the sufferings they had escaped, while, at the same time, the hand of a beneficent Father wiped away the tears from their eyes'.